This week there are four games that struck my fancy. One gets at something I always want to push – diversity in gaming. It’s important to expand the industry by making everyone welcome at the gaming table and that starts with settings that appeal to all walks of life. Other games on the list look at Great Old Ones in 5e, varieties of games, and collections of NPCs. Read on to see what speaks to you.

Check out John McGuire’s The Gilded Age steampunk graphic novel on Kickstarter!

“A non-linear adventure in the classic Sandbox style where the party (Level 10-11) opposes the followers of a Lovecraftian Old One

About This Project

Confronting Hastur is an adventure for three to seven characters about level ten. It is designed for use with the Fifth Edition version of Gary and Dave’s RPG. It can be adapted to any fantasy RPG.

The Premise

About a year after the events of The City of Talos, the characters return to the city of Meawold as part of their travels, and they are contacted by Cora, an agent of Talos. She wants the party members to accept a mission to investigate several leaders of the Meawold community to find the person or persons who are part of a newly risen cult of Hastur. The augers of Talos have sensed someone near Meawold is reaching out to Hastur, and appears to be preparing a vessel to hold an aspect of Hastur. Cora has a list of people she has observed behaving oddly who have the means to further a cultist plot. The party members are to investigate these people, identify the person or persons who are involved, and destroy the cult and their vessel before an aspect can be pulled across time and space.”

Potential Cover for DNH4-Confronting Hastur

Wanna-lancer* Rewards:

“Pledge $100 or more / $200 or more
Involved Naga / Committed Naga

Both levels get all of the physical and digital rewards as well as:

… you will enjoy limited participation by naming and describing an NPC (subject to Head Naga final approval).

Committed Naga also includes:

This level also takes things a few steps further by having the NPC you helped develop crystallized with a B&W drawing. The art blends the description with your likeness (or a likeness of someone you want to immortalize). There are some Terms and Condition details on this item.”

*Wanna-lancer™ – A gamer that’s pursuing freelance RPG work. Some back RPG Kickstarters that offer rewards to create NPCs, spells, items, adventures, etc. in order to build up their resume, make contact with publishers, and learn what’s expected on assignments.

Egg’s Thoughts:

Need a 5e adventure with some Great Old Ones for your table? Is your table ready to take down a cult? Want to design an NPC for this adventure so it feels more like your own? Dark Naga has you covered with this one. On the surface, it’s what you expect but it’s also what you want at the table. This is going to be a fun adventure no matter how you look at it.

“MYTHIC D6 is a dice-based tabletop RPG created to play heroic action adventure in your genre of choice.

MYTHIC D6 is a dice-based tabletop role playing game created to play heroic action adventure in your genre of choice. The spiritual successor of the D6 Legends games system produced by West End Games, it, and the game worlds it supports, opens new options and opportunities for playing across a wide spectrum of genres. Incorporating 20 years of innovation into a tried and true system gives gamers ultimate flexibility when looking for a transparent and intuitive system.

The game is done, its ready to go. All I need are the resources to print it and pay for art, shipping and marketing. The game is a reality, but YOU can make it better. I want this project to be the premier flagship for the future of D6 gaming and I can do that with the generous resources you will hopefully provide.

A Fully Realized Setting!
Superheroes vs Monsters! This is the world of Mythic, a world where super human heroes battle the forces of a shadowy dimensional incursion while dealing with infighting and betrayals that threaten to tear their lives apart. Until recently Earth’s history was pretty much as we know it today. With one exception…

With the barrier between our dimension and the Otherlands weakened, things leaked from the dark dimension into Earth’s reality; not only monsters and cryptids but also spirits and dark emotional energy.

Into the mix comes the Institute, a shadowy organization with its origins in project Warhorse, the government program that succeeded in creating metahumans during World War 2. The Institute has set itself up to fight the invasion, bringing to bear superhumans it created for just this purpose.”

Bastion(A MYTHIC D6 fantasy game world)
$30,000
A dark Afrocentric sword and soul post-apocalyptic fantasy game set in a world on the brink of ultimate annihilation. Heroes take on the roles of the Fihankra, warriors with the mission of delivering the city of Bastion and its people from the vile machinations of the Overfiend. (Think Stephen King’s The Mist, Merv Peake’s Gormenghast mashed together with Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro)

Wanna-lancer Reward:

“Pledge $200 or more
5D6

PDF and PRINT copy of the MYTHIC D6 roleplaying game.

Plus, all the reached Stretch Goals in PDF and Print.

Create a signature NPC or monster to be part of one of the game background in the book.”

Egg’s Thoughts:

I workforEN Worldbecause I believe in theirmission – diversity in gaming. That mission is why I want this campaign to reach its stretch goal and unleash Bastion on the gaming world! “A dark Afrocentric sword and soul post-apocalyptic fantasy game set in a world on the brink of ultimate annihilation.” As a setting, this would be an exciting gaming option for fantasy RPG. It’s a distant stretch goal but one I’m hoping they achieve because, combined with the 5D6 backer level that allows you to create a NPC or monster, this game and world will shine that much more!

“The masterfully illustrated tabletop RPG aid is back to bring you majestic heroes and epic villains.

We are the Knights of Vasteel. We are on a mission to create premium tools and accessories for tabletop RPGs that meld the physical and digital worlds into one seamless experience. NPC For Hire: Heroes & Villains is the next step on our journey.

What is NPC For Hire?

*Heroes & Villains art is still pending

NPC For Hire is a deck of 52 cards with beautiful hand-drawn portraits of fantasy folk. At this point, we now have 3 editions of NPC For Hire:

Heroes and Villains

This campaign will add the 4th edition to the NPC For Hire family. We are proud to introduce Heroes & Villains. The money raised from this Kickstarter will fund the artwork, development, and shipping of these decks.

A lot of people have been asking for more heroes and villains to be included and as we’ve used NPC For Hire in our own campaigns, we found that we wholeheartedly agree! We decided to dedicate an entire edition to heroes and villains. This is what the breakdown of portraits will be on the deck:

40 Villains

12 Heroes

Notice that the majority of this deck will be of villainous NPCs. That’s because a great deal of our current NPC portraits can be used in a heroic role while not many can be used in a villainous role. By adding more portraits specifically tailored as villains, it will help balance things out. With that being said, we did feel that we were missing some of those more majestic heroes so we wanted to include a few in this edition as well.

With the growing ranks of the NPCs from the Knights of Vasteel projects, they’re getting close to populating a setting and that makes this a cool project. Add in the killer art and, if you need NPCs, this is an excellent set.

“Five tabletop roleplaying games set in the twisted world of the immortal and unknowable black monk, who offers salvation… at a price.

The Black Monk is a series of five games set in a strange fantasy world where time means nothing anymore. Each game is set in a unique part of a desolate world, with strange characters passing the time until the Black Monk visits.

In between these visits, the character’s lives are interrupted by sometimes trivial and other times confusing events. Everything seems to fit together like an elongated jigsaw puzzle, but no one can see the starter pieces stretching across the horizon.

But they don’t complain. There is always more work. The village needs workers.

Then one evening, the sun stayed in the sky all day. When there should have been night, the sun remained. And now it feels as though it’s been years since the Black Monk came. But perhaps it was yesterday. Nothing is right…

Is that blood?

The first Black Monk game was written a year ago and is available online. For completion’s sake, it is available through this kickstarter as well.”

Egg’s Thoughts:

I backed Post World Games/Jim Pinto’s “The $1 Play What You Want Mystery Campaign RPG Project” and I have more than gotten my dollar’s worth of entertainment from it (plus PDFs and, of course, the forthcoming game). The title of my favorite update on the dollar project was “it’s 3am. do you know where your dollar is?”

How does that project relate to Jim’s current campaign? I have not gotten my $1 game yet, but I have gotten more entertainment than you can buy for a buck. If I’m tickled pink with an undelivered project, imagine how good this one could be since, you know, parts of it are already up and running here. This is going to be a winning project.

Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press. His purchases have been published by:

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About Egg Embry

Egg Embry wrote comic book short stories, edited comic book series, wrote and drew a webcomic, and contributed to comic book journalism across the 2000s. Now, he buys the opportunity to write for a variety of tabletop role-playing games in the tradition of vanity press.